Developing Ukraine's Air Power
It's taken two years, but Ukraine is finally starting to receive the level of support that it needs to fully revamp its aviation branch. Over the next six months this will slowly transform its fight.
It’s been a fascinating week in the Ukraine War. Moscow’s forces are mostly stuck on the ground, have pulled nearly everything but submarines from the Black Sea, and are rapidly losing air defense systems, especially in Crimea.
This week’s three sections will first cover developments along the fronts, then turn to the matter of Ukraine’s expanding air power and the potential this holds for turning the tide once and for all. The last section will look at geopolitical developments.
Overview Of The Fronts
Thankfully for Ukraine’s soldiers, Moscow’s window of opportunity to wrest meaningful gains this year has all but closed. Frankly, the degradation of ruscist operational art visible in nearly every operation these days implies that Putin has lost the strategic initiative for good unless substantial competent reserves materialize. He can stumble forward on various fronts, but the effort only plays into Ukraine’s operational trap.
Apparently Putin and Netanyahu have been learning a lot from each other. Including the trick of managing to miserably fail in a war without losing their job. It’s too bad the IDF has followed a similar trend, landing itself in an unwinnable insurgency across Gaza while it and Hezbollah prepare for their own big war.
Though Ukrainian forces are slowly pulling back in places, the cost Putin’s orcs are paying for every meter of advance is simply staggering. The seven day rolling average of orcs killed has dipped slightly… to about 1,100 a day, 8,000 or so over the last week. Another 100+ tanks were smashed too, along with nearly 150 troop carriers and several hundred artillery pieces of various types. This drain is unsustainable, and the situation can only worsen as the average repair effort increases.
Putin is spending a huge amount of money on his war machine, but efficiency counts. Reports of defects in many kinds of weapons, not just imported North Korean shells and missiles, are rising. Once past a certain point, and Moscow might even be nearing it already, the average quality of its equipment will decline to the point its ground war looks like Iraqis fighting Americans in 1991.
Moscow might be able to make good the personnel losses by drawing on the empire’s poor for a few years more yet, but in a war if you’re at a stable state in terms of raw losses you’re actually losing ground in a qualitative sense, just like with stored gear. This may be why higher surrender rates, including the survivors of entire assault groups, are edging up of late.
Moscow hasn’t just been recruiting soldiers into a giant reserve pool to replace losses; it’s also massively increased the number in Ukraine overall, from around 200,000 at the start of the all-out invasion to over 500,000 now. Putin could only achieve that by recruiting more bodies than his senior officers managed to lose from October of 2022, when mobilization began, to October of 2023, when losses spiked as Moscow switched over to the offensive in several sectors, particularly Avdiivka.
Thanks to mobilization, quality-wise the orc forces were on a stable and possibly slightly improving trend for about six months; then the Kharkiv operation began and Moscow threw away thousands of lives for little gain. It has continued to intensify operations elsewhere, especially the area west of Avdiivka towards Pokrovsk and Chasiv Yar. The proven inability of orc officers to manage an effective corps-level operation powerful enough to turn the northern flank of Ukraine’s Donbas defense is forcing the ruscists to revert a pure attrition strategy everywhere they can.
Over the weekend, Ukraine’s commanding general, Syrskyi, made comments to the effect that Moscow’s strategy is simply to try and exhaust Ukrainian forces to prevent them from mounting their own major offensive actions. I agree - while in May Putin almost certainly hoped this attack would amount to much more, that no similar pushes have been attempted in Sumy or other parts of Kharkiv indicates dissatisfaction with his army’s results. The orcs also seem to have underestimated the reserves at Ukraine’s disposal.
Putin seems to be intensifying the purge of his defense department, a process those vulnerable to it probably saw coming long in advance, anyone with connections protecting themselves while the less fortunate are thrown to the wolves. With active combat in Ukraine serving as a brutally effective purge of competence from the ranks, leaving an estimated 90% of the original invasion force dead or crippled, small wonder that the Red Army 2.0 Putin has constructed strongly resembles its predecessor from the winter of 1939-1940 that was crushed by the Finns. Its competent professionals are mostly sunflower fertilizer, having the same effect as Stalin’s purges.
The orcs have been trying for two years to revert to the strategy that proved effective against the isolated Finns the following summer: total obliteration of all defenses. But the active front in Ukraine today is far longer than the key one in Finland ever was and Kyiv has bigger, more committed allies. Most of the Finnish population (speaking of, hey Taru, you still out there? You ought to write a Substack) resides along the coast not terribly far from St. Petersburg, so when Finland’s defense line was finally breached in 1940 its leaders wisely chose to negotiate. The population was and remains about a tenth of Ukraine’s.
This was possible because Moscow then wasn’t trying to annihilate Finland like it is Ukraine now. While a prosperous country formerly colonized by Moscow for a time, after the Second World War Finland lost the territories that Moscow was most interested in, namely the nickel mines in Petsamo on Finland’s former Arctic coast and Karelia around Lake Ladoga, which is proximate to St. Petersburg.
So the strategy of annihilation won’t work in Ukraine: Moscow needs to have trained, effective personnel on the ground who are capable of taking and holding it, even if it’s been worked over by artillery and scouted by drones. And it takes time to train a decent soldier, even longer for someone to gain the practical experience needed to lead them in a fight. There’s going to be a gap between the time a newly mobilized orc shows up at training and arrives on the battlefield able to do more than absorb a Ukrainian drone.
Every now and again, mostly on the Avdiivka front, orc forces have demonstrated a level of competence that implies decent leadership. But these cases are in the minority, skill transfer likely hampered by the information hoarding that you see in any highly authoritarian social system - and the ridiculously high casualty rate, too.
In short, maintaining Moscow’s present posture in Ukraine is eventually going to leave the front line dangerously understaffed again. Most likely, at several points which Ukraine can locate - the new AWACS aircraft Sweden is sending will help with this - and strike with overwhelming force. Once Ukraine’s forces have regenerated enough combat power and have more effective air support, the initiative can and will return to Kyiv.
That’s why Ukrainian forces are conducting defensive operations like they are right now. Not unlike in the summer of 2022, Ukraine’s goal is to onboard as much modern equipment as it can while trading space for blood as fresh formations are trained and equipped. Instead of a singular offensive, operations are likely to be small and scattered, steadily intensifying throughout late summer and autumn. Syrskyi’s older moniker, snow leopard, might offer some insight into how he fights: with great patience, waiting for the perfect moment to strike.
Considering the extreme difficulty of massing enough combat power to advance thanks to drones, it might be necessary to conduct offensive operations that are broad but shallow to feel out the full scope of the enemy’s system. Moscow is edging towards this this while also concentrating lots of troops in the traditional way to compensate for its lack of precision weapons. Ukraine, better equipped and with properly trained forces, could potentially succeed where the orcs seem doomed to fail no matter what tactical adaptations they try.
With respect to the most active fronts, Avdiivka, what the Ukrainian military is calling the Pokrovsk direction, has again been the toughest for Ukraine this past week. The orcs have been fighting to push Ukraine off the last heights east of the Vovcha river, slowly but likely very painfully making progress.
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Though ruscist troops have secured much of Novooleksandrivka, their most dangerous direction of advance given that a major road connecting Kostiantynivka and Pokrovsk is just a few kilometers to the northwest, they haven’t been able to go farther. A big part of the reason is that Ukrainian brigades to the south of the one apparently blocking Moscow here, 110th, 100th, and 47th Mechanized, 68th Jager, and 25th Airborne, 61st Mechanized and 59th Motorized, among others are still contesting the eastern slope of the Vovcha.
Only once ruscist forces have pushed them back across the river will they be free to reallocate forces north to push towards Kostiantynivka. I still hold this to be the objective because the valley of the Vovcha creates about 50m - or 15 stories - of terrain relief across less than 1km of ground on the western bank. While not steep so far as slopes go, this still allows Ukrainian forces just west of the Vovcha to fire down on any orcs trying to descend to the eastern bank. Several reservoirs create excellent choke points that any ruscist troops trying to cross will discover to be horrific killing fields.
Ukraine is slowly pulling back to a superior defensive position; fighting hard for every inch of suitable ground is the cost of maximizing orc casualties. Ukrainian forces are not trying to defend every position for the sake of it, which is good. Most of Moscow’s gains in the fight for Avdiivka came when Ukraine was critically short on artillery shells, but the shell famine has ended, ammunition from the Czech initiative now arriving. If the orcs can’t push over that other Vovcha river up in Kharkiv, they’re not getting to Pokrovsk any time soon.
But once Kyiv's troops are pushed from the eastern bank that will give ruscist forces space to turn north. Attacks up the highway from Avdiivka to Kostiantynivka are likely, though Moscow probably wants to keep troops as far from Toretsk as possible. In addition, it will still have to get across the Vovcha south of Kostiantynivka at some point if it hopes to reach the city, and a big reservoir by Yablunivka will make for a potent barrier.
Keeping ruscist forces well away from this point would be ideal, though, because the last thing the defenders of Chasiv Yar need is artillery and drone fire hitting their southern flank. Moscow’s troops have continued storming the Kanal district west of Chasiv Yar, but so far have not been able to clear Ukrainian troops from the place. An attempt to bypass it to the south seems likely, but will have to push up a slope that Ukraine is stubbornly defending.
There’s been the usual pattern of regular attacks in other areas like Krynky, Robotyne, Kupiansk, and Urozhaine. Krasnohorivka is also still a point of orc attention, as this is the last reasonably sizable settlement east of the Vovcha that Ukraine can use as a base, and Moscow needs the area secure to press on towards Kurakhove. This in turn is part of the broader effort to dislodge Ukraine from Vuhledar that I wrote about last week. And fighting continues in Kharkiv, of course, with Ukrainian troops launching local counterattacks that may have even cut off dozens, maybe hundreds, of orcs inside an industrial plant in Vovchansk.
But one other new orc move bears pointing out. The bulge that has formed around Siversk appears to be a sector where Moscow thinks it can either force Ukraine to commit troops or cede territory. The 10th Mountain Assault, to the south, 54th Mechanized in the middle, and 81st Airmobile holding the mining center Bilohorivka on the northern edge of the arc have all reportedly been in the area for a very long time without relief. They could be very tired.
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Unlike Kharkiv, where Ukraine likely already had elements of the brigades that blocked the orc push deployed there to recuperate from fighting elsewhere - hence the speed of their appearance and vigor of their defense - it is unlikely that Siversk has ever been enough of a safe haven to do that. It’s one of those areas where Moscow’s apparent lack of interest has allowed Ukraine to cover a roughly 40km arc with perhaps three regular and one or two territorial defense brigades.
Moscow achieved its breakthrough at Ocheretyne by concentrating about a division of around ten thousand troops on a three to five kilometer section of front covered by one Ukrainian brigade at just the right moment. There appear to be only a handful of orc officers capable of organizing this, but the risk must be considered. The Ukrainians have had to fall back slightly on the southern edge of the arc, so a situation might be developing.
In many ways, though the brutal pace of these reckless ruscist assaults isn’t lessening, the decisive domain of the war is beginning to shift. For Ukraine to liberate its territory now requires more than ground forces - that was the single most important lesson of 2023. With adequate air power, Ukraine’s counteroffensive last summer would have been a success. Moscow’s lines came close to cracking, and it was its own air power that made the difference.
Moscow’s long range surveillance drones remain one its few ongoing strengths. They are small and cheap enough that using air defense missiles to swat them down isn’t economical or always possible thanks to their scarcity. The drones fly high enough that shoulder-fired SAMs and flak can’t reach. While small FPV quadcopter drones are cheaper and plentiful, it takes almost all their battery charge to reach the necessary altitude, lowering the odds of a successful intercept.
Ukraine is already experimenting with solutions, including crewed civilian aircraft in airspace far from the front. I expect that air defense drones armed with guns or laser guided rockets with proximity fuses will soon become a feature of Ukrainian skies. Luckily, an interceptor drone equipped with a simple frequency scanner like the ones ground troops use to warn of a drone operating nearby can detect the presence of targets. An operator will be able to follow the electronic trail until the offending Orlan or Zala is in range.
Also, Ukraine managed to launch one of its biggest drone raids yet this past week, hitting one of the main airfields used by orc jets to sustain their glide bomb deliveries. Though damage appears only slight, it was widespread enough to force the base to at least temporarily move its aircraft elsewhere, and more attacks like it can be expected. Most anything that disrupts the enemy’s rhythm helps.
Crimea’s air defenses are being pummeled by ATACMS strikes, forcing Moscow to send its latest S-500 to cover the Kerch Strait bridge. We’ll see if it lives up to half the hype that once surrounded the vaunted S-400s that Ukraine keeps on burning.
The air war is at last on the verge of shifting Ukraine’s way. Even when it comes to strategic level attacks Putin’s power continues to decay. Moscow can destroy a Ukrainian power facility every few weeks, sure, but the window for such frequent success there is also slamming shut.
Taking The Initiative In the Air War
Over the past week Ukraine has received some excellent - if much too delayed - news: NATO as a collective has finally announced an effective doubling of Ukraine’s long range air defense capabilities.
More air defenses will help mitigate the threat of glide bomb attacks as well as improve Ukraine’s efficiency in shooting down incoming missile waves. The new systems set to arrive, along with another pair that Germany donated in August of 2023 and April of 2024, get Ukraine to eight Patriot and two Aster batteries, hopefully by the end of summer. While Ukraine needs a minimum of thirteen and ideally two dozen, ten systems will be enough to protect Kyiv, Kharkiv, Odesa-Mykoloaiv-Kherson and Dnipro-Zaporizhzhia-Krivy Rih with two systems each to ward off ruscist efforts to kill them. That leave two others operating in wandering mode, probably in Donbas, while giving each battery pair enough reserves to deploy its own forward team to enhance coverage near the front lines.
AWACS aircraft and F-16s will cover the blind spots terrain leaves in any ground based system’s radar coverage. The former will use their 400km max range radars to peer 100-150km behind orc lines from a safe distance behind their own and guide missiles launched by F-16s to their appointed meeting with orc Sukhois. So far Ukrainian analysts have mostly been setting the expectation that the F-16s will get the AIM-120D model with its 160km+ range, and even if each Viper only flies with two in addition to four of the C variant with its shorter 100km range, that will allow a Ukrainian pilot 50km behind the front to make the orcs pay for attempts to offer close air support.
Trying to attack Ukraine’s own jets won’t work well because ruscists will have to enter the range of Ukrainian weapons to shoot them down. The winner in that joust is the pilot with better situational awareness and ECM. The diagram below gives a sense of how this fight looks - in effect, Ukraine is expanding the aerial gray zone deep into ruscist territory.
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When it comes to provisioning Ukraine with long-range SAMs, as big a bottleneck as their raw availability is how quickly personnel can be trained to operate them. I doubt it’s any accident that Ukraine’s capabilities went from three batteries in early 2023 to six by early 2024 and should hit twelve by 2025. The technical skills required are substantial; it says a lot that Ukrainians have not only mastered the systems but been incredibly innovative in employing them. And developing a pipeline of trained technicians takes time.
NATO has also given Ukraine one to two dozen mid-range SAM batteries of the IRIS-T and NASAMS variety and helped convert Soviet-era Buk and Osa launchers to fire Sea Sparrow and Sidewinder short-range missiles. Added to the teams of drone hunters driving pickup trucks with machine guns mounted on the back and maybe a few old Igla portable SAMs, plus the few dozen old Gepard and Shilka flak tanks in service, and Ukraine has a reasonably effective multi-layer ground based air defense system that can keep orc jets well on their side of the front lines while swatting down most cruise missiles and Shahed drones sent its way. That’s pretty impressive after two and a half years of all-out war.
However, even once Ukraine does eventually field a couple dozen long-range SAM systems (you can bet it’s looking into making its own), that alone won’t be enough to seize the initiative in the air domain. The threat of mass drone and missile attacks will always keep the precious long range SAM systems at least 50km from the front line. Though nominally ability to detect and shoot down low-flying aircraft 150km away, effective electronic countermeasures and skillful use of the terrain can substantially degrade that performance.
In fact, Ukraine has been able to launch a surprisingly large number of ground attack missions in the Kharkiv area with its existing fleet of Soviet-era jets. Now that HIMARS attacks are reportedly smashing ruscist radar systems within about 60km of the border, flying near Kharkiv is much safer than it used to be. Losing a couple AWACS jets hurt Moscow’s ability to sustain twenty-four hour patrols, and having to keep them at least 300km from Ukrainian territory, thanks to the threat of updated S-200 very long range SAMs, limits their ability to peer behind Ukrainian lines and guide missiles even in the absence of jamming.
Jets using French Hammer glide bombs, which have a convenient rocket motor to enhance their range even when released from low altitude, have been recorded hitting ruscist forces in Vovchansk. These, as well as some models of the US-made JDAM, have a laser receiver that allows ground troops to ensure a precise hit regardless of orc GPS jamming. But the fact that Ukrainian jets must be getting within at least 50km of the front to launch them implies that F-16s stand to have little trouble operating close enough to hit ruscist bombers as they move to release their own glide bombs thanks to the power of the electronic countermeasures pods they can carry.
Data links are the Vipers’ other critical advantage. An AWACS jet over the Dnipro or a Patriot battery south of Kharkiv can pick up a radar contact north of Belgorod and instantly pass its location to an F-16 pilot flying at low altitude with sensors switched off to stay hidden. Electromagnetic techniques and terrain can be as effective as the brute force stealth that the US Air Force remains so obsessed with.
It’s why Ukraine is pushing to field jets that are actually fairly old, refurbished a couple decades ago to operate at the standard F-16C block level of new US jets after the end of the Cold War. This is not the premier NATO multirole jet by any means, just the one most readily available. In many respects, F-16s or any other combat jet are simply a big booster for the advanced missiles they literally fire off and forget, preferring distance from hostile fire to certainty of scoring a kill.
To advance on the ground, ruscist jets must be forced to stay so far back that they can’t throw glide bombs at Ukrainian positions much beyond the front, if even that far. This is one of the biggest factors that undermined Ukraine’s counteroffensive efforts in the summer of 2023 - along with heavy use of attack helicopters as anti-tank snipers.
While ruscist Lancet drones are what everyone sees blowing up NATO tanks and infantry fighting vehicles in videos, in reality these propaganda shots are generally about finishing off damaged models abandoned by their crews before they can be recovered and repaired. Lancets do appear to have gotten better at hitting the warm engine blocks of ground vehicles, including moving ones, but a year ago the orcs generally had to use anti-tank missiles or mines to damage a Leopard or Abrams enough that a drone or artillery strike could finish it off.
By the middle of 2024 the threat posed by Ka-52 Alligator attack helicopters will largely be a thing of the past. Glide bomb strikes will be less timely at the least and hopefully substantially reduced overall once Ukraine is flying enough F-16 sorties every day to threaten any given orc attack flight with death from afar. That will in turn make massing enough armored vehicles close enough to the front to rapidly engage and destroy ruscist field positions substantially less challenging.
F-16s won’t be available in the numbers required to stop most air attacks for many months yet, but Moscow has been so sensitive to attrition of air assets that even a few losses should prompt a shift to more cautious tactics. Right now, with nearly ninety F-16 airframes promised by Denmark, the Netherlands, Norway, and Belgium, only around sixty are set to be combat capable. Ukraine needs at least twice that number active, which means closer to two hundred in the overall inventory.
Most analysts talk about F-16 squadrons in terms of NATO-standard groupings of about twenty jets and forty pilots, but it seems likely that Ukraine’s squadrons will be much smaller, no more than a dozen jets and two dozen pilots with an additional four to eight jets in Romania or Poland for training or undergoing maintenance. Still, any way you slice it, the F-16s that Ukraine has been promised aren’t enough.
Of course, the situation with aircraft is arguably better than the one with pilots. Announcements so far indicate that Ukraine has between twelve and fifteen pilots as of June, around six from the center in Arizona and eight from the one in Denmark. As many should graduate every three months, giving Ukraine forty-five or so by year’s end.
It’s reasonable to assume that each pilot will fly an average of one sortie per day, doing two a day for half a week then performing ground duty for the rest to recover. You can’t push personnel too hard, but pilots less than most given the ease of making a fatal mistake. A huge number of prospective and experienced pilots have always been lost in accidents; these are always a tragic waste of potential.
Once you hit thirty sorties a day, having at least a pair of Vipers ready to intercept Sukhois at any given time is possible. At sixty, two pairs are constantly up, doubling the potential kill rate. Hit one hundred and twenty, and two four-ship flights can deliver damage somewhere every couple hours. Moscow only flies upwards of 200 sorties on a busy day, half routine air patrols.
Accelerating the rate of pilot training is a major priority for Ukraine: it might only involve a few hundred more bodies each year, but their impact can be incredible. Unfortunately it appears that future training for F-16s is a bit uncertain, with the USA only allowing four Ukrainians at a time next year, meaning no more than eight to twelve graduates in total across 2025, and Denmark’s school set to close. A new one in Romania has started up with a throughput of eight, but that isn’t enough.
Zelensky has indicated that there are thirty Ukrainian pilots who have completed enough English language training to move on to the advanced level. One has to assume that this pipeline began operating when the advanced one did last October, implying that Ukraine can graduate at least thirty pilots to the advanced level every six months. Say that rate can is doubled halfway through 2025 -Ukraine could exceed two hundred trained combat pilots.
France is reportedly training another half a dozen now and I imagine that’s ongoing, though I don’t know if their training is in French instead of English. That might limit this pipeline to pilots set to fly the Mirage 2000-5s that France recently decided to send to Ukraine.
The French have been avid arms exporters for decades, with warehouses full of French kit scattered across the Middle East offering tremendous potential for Ukraine. France’s aviation industry has long fought to maintain a degree of national independence, just like Sweden’s has. Not being as dependent on the US as Saab has allowed France to become the supplier of choice for countries that don’t want to get dragged into D.C.-Moscow power games. So there are probably several hundred older Mirage 2000 aircraft in operation around the world that are mostly up for replacement by newer Rafales in the near future.
The Mirage 2000 series has a ton of variants and is a smaller equivalent to the F-16, with shorter range and less payload but higher speed, maneuverability, and service ceiling. It can be adapted to carry a Storm Shadow/SCALP-EG cruise missile with a range of over 250km, a role is presently filled by Ukraine’s Su-24 fleet. This is a capable aircraft, but its Soviet origins mean that Ukraine keeps a squadron of ten or so operational only by cannibalizing unflyable models - of which it luckily has a lot. In addition, thanks to the way the data interface between the Soviet and NATO components works, strikes have to be pre-planned, meaning that a complement that can natively interface with NATO weapons is ideal.
Even half a dozen Mirage 2000 jets, likely operational by the end of 2024, will give Ukraine the ability to maintain a pair on patrol at all times. Within an hour of receiving confirmation of a high value asset parking somewhere or a meeting of orc officers being held just out of HIMARS range in Belgorod, a couple stealthy cruise missiles that Moscow has had trouble intercepting can crash down. They don’t have long-range air-to-air missiles, but twenty or even forty would do nicely to supplant the Su-24 fleet.
In other interesting though somewhat odd aviation news, Argentina has agreed to send Ukraine five Super Etendards. These are particularly old and not in great condition, so while they can carry Exocet anti-ship missiles (this combination did quite a number on the Brits some four decades back) I suspect that their real purpose is to serve as advanced trainers to augment the Mirage 2000s. It’s mainly a significant development because Argentina, recently elected a hard-right president many have compared to Trump. Chalk up another win for Ukraine’s efforts to connect with the rest of the post-colonial world regardless of partisan lean.
Assuming that France steadily expands the Mirage 2000 contribution and handles all training, allowing Ukraine to augment or replace its Su-24s, that still leaves Ukraine needing another 100+ multirole fighters able to match the effective range of orc R-37 air to air missiles. Fortunately Sweden appears to be helping, indirectly confirming that Gripens are in Ukraine’s future once F-16s have been integrated. They are Sweden’s answer to the F-16, carrying the long-range Meteor air to air missile and sporting a radar with enough range to match the one on an Su-35.
How many pilots Sweden might secretly be helping train abroad is unknown; Hungary, Czechia, South Africa, and Thailand all operate a few Gripens, while Brazil has more. It is hard to imagine Ukraine getting more than a squadron of twelve to twenty before 2026, though. Sweden itself only fields three and Saab has had limited export success. That’s partly thanks to competition from the French Rafale, which is bigger and can fly from aircraft carriers, and partly the Lockheed F-35, which is an over-priced, committee-designed, maintenance-intensive mess of a platform that nevertheless boasts powerful electronic systems. Both France and the USA also aggressively leverage diplomacy to advance their defense companies’ interests.
The Gripen, like the Swedish CV-90 infantry fighting vehicle and German Leopard 2 line also used by the Swedes, is probably an ideal choice for future production in Ukraine, which once hosted a big chunk of the Soviet aviation industry. The lower cost of Ukrainian labor means that it is almost guaranteed to be the heart of Europe’s future defense base - another reason Putin wants it so bad. But it takes years to set up a jet production line, and Ukraine needs fighters as soon as possible. As is also the case with ground equipment, if it’s usable Ukraine needs it sooner as opposed to later.
As for getting more F-16s, with the US retiring its last F-16Cs in the near future it would make sense for Ukraine to get a commitment before the end of the year. But the trouble with the F-16 has always been competition for parts - and, it seems, training slots. Israel and Taiwan both operate F-16s, and the first will always have priority in D.C.
All in all, the legacy models of F-18 Hornet would seem to be the best candidate to fill Ukraine’s remaining requirement for another 40-60 multirole fighters. A direct competitor to the F-16 during its design phase, the F-18 was adopted by the U.S. Navy and Marine Corps to replace the A-7 Corsair fighter-bomber of the later Vietnam era. Unlike the F-16, the F-18 (also referred to as the F/A-18, EF-18, or CF-18 depending on the user), was meant from the outset to handle long range air to air combat, helping F-14 Tomcats cope with mass missile attacks launched by Soviet bombers.
Most legacy Hornets in service are older, but many still have a good number of flyable hours left. Australia recently retired its last models, but supposedly more than a dozen airframes have a couple years in them yet. Current users like Canada, Finland, and the US Marine Corps have or plan to replace their Hornets with F-35s. Spain and Kuwait fly them too, and there are some in Malaysia and Switzerland as well. Canadian air defense commitments can be picked up by the US with ease, Spain faces no immediate threat from anyone, Finland is now part of NATO, and Kuwait supposedly has many of its Hornets sitting in hangars, maintained but hardly used.
This should mean that there are multiple sources of parts and potentially training, which is the real limiting factor right now. Commit sixty F-18s from various sources now and get pilots training as quickly as slots can be secured, then Ukraine’s air arm could be fully topped off in material terms with 90-120 F-16s, 40-60 F-18s, and 20 Gripens by the end of 2025, ensuring that however things look on the ground then Ukraine’s air arm can dominate Putin’s flying orc circus and make good inevitable losses.
Assuming that Ukraine gets at least 20 Mirage 2000s for the long-range strike role, that leaves two or three squadrons of ground attack jets to replace the venerable Su-25s. For the latter there can be only one option: the US A-10, which is getting old and sucking down too many U.S. Air Force maintenance hours to justify keeping the jets on the books.
The point of sending the A-10 is not, to be clear, related to its massive cannon. In fact most missions would be flown without ammunition for it to boost the jet’s speed, which is slightly slower than an Su-25’s. I’ve heard the famous Brrrrrrt and it absolutely does send the good kind of chills down the spine to know you’re on the side with that level of firepower at its disposal. But A-10s, like other NATO jets, are best seen as a platform that lets pilots selectively deploy precision weapons.
Like other NATO aircraft, the A-10 can also make use of secure networks to act as a simple delivery platform for a range of guided weapons. Laser-guided missiles or rockets fired from an A-10 flying twenty kilometers behind the front could be guided to targets by soldiers on the ground, augmenting FPV drones. A-10s also carry ECM and pack HARM missiles, allowing them to attack enemy communications and jamming out to 80km or so. Glide bombs are also an option, allowing a low-flying A-10 to hit ground targets on demand from even farther back.
The morale boost to soldiers on the front line that comes from knowing that if they get into trouble a jet will sling some JDAMs in front of their position cannot be underestimated. Nor can the effect of soldiers being able to user laser designators to pick out precise spots where they want fire support to land - ideally using a drone, so they never have to leave the bunker.
Of course, in an ideal world Ukraine wouldn’t have to wait until the end of 2025 for its skies to be properly defended. Foreign volunteers are not at all unprecedented in military aviation, in fact it’s largely been the rule. In the Korean War American pilots routinely found themselves up against Russian-speaking pilots with surprising levels of proficiency.
As far back as the spring of 2022 I was one of those suggesting that Ukraine recruit veteran pilots from abroad to form an international combat air wing. They could run combat missions that never take them outside of Ukrainian airspace and train the next generation of Ukrainian pilots. Had someone helped put this together for Ukraine two years ago - where are a few billionaires when you need them? - the war for the skies in Ukraine would already be all but won. There would be no talk of any new grand ruscist offensives because their ability to take and hold new ground would be gone.
Even without having enough pilots trained to use them it’s essential for Ukraine to know what aircraft it can get over the next few years as soon as possible. Ukraine has managed, in a frankly inspirational story that will be studied for generations to come, to maintain a Soviet-era fleet of totally outclassed jets half intact after this many months at war.
Give Ukraine parity in the skies up to the front line and Putin’s dreams of conquest die. For almost two years it has been his air force that made the difference between clinging to life and humiliating defeat. He knows it, too: that’s why ruscist forces are working so hard to hit Ukraine’s air bases these days.
Strategic Developments
On the geopolitical front, the recent peace summit in Switzerland threw a surprisingly robust response, nearly a hundred countries agreeing both that it was russia that started this war and that the terrible conflict can only end with the restoration of Ukraine’s full sovereign integrity. If the tattered remnants of the Postwar Order’s core idea that no country has the right to cross international borders and annex parts of its neighbor are to stand, Ukraine is where that has to happen.
In 1991 the USA and a global coalition went to war with the world’s fourth largest army, one armed - in part thanks to the US - with a fearsome arsenal of chemical weapons. Saddam Hussein promised the “mother of all battles” at a moment when the outcome of the Cold War was not yet known. Casualties were expected to run into the thousands on both sides, and Kuwait wasn’t - isn’t - a democracy.
Yet back when American leadership still meant something, the USA took an appropriate risk to preserve a vital international principle. This time, nobody is asking for Americans to lay down their lives to protect a sovereign country under attack. Ukrainians and a few foreign volunteers are doing all the hard lifting: all its friends abroad have to do is stop clinging to equipment and whining about paying a mere fraction of what was thrown at the futile War on Terror.
The outcome of the peace summit makes the mission clear: Putin’s forces must withdraw back behind the borders of 1991. It isn’t hyperbole to state the simple truth that the future of the international community depends on making this so. Any global order worth the name must arise from the emergence of alliances willing to do whatever is necessary to defend the simple principle of sovereign boundaries.
Philosophically I dislike them: pragmatically speaking, they’re the only proven way to keep the peace. An individual person’s self must be inviolate unless they seek to do harm to others. Their home and property must be as well, unless the owner uses them to violate the natural rights of others - say by trapping them inside. The principle scales all the way up to the country level - and must, or it’s back to rule by the strong.
Having witnessed dozens, maybe hundreds, of human lives snuffed out by robots on video feeds over the past two and a half years, let me bear witness to this much: no one wants to live in the future where this gets further out of control. And it will if Putin isn’t stopped, the message sent for all time that certain offenses cannot stand, no matter the threatened cost. The alternative is a future where the world is divvied up into hostile nuclear-economic blocks that will one day stumble into a global disaster.
No diplomatic accord is worth any more than the combat power it generates at the point of decision when the time comes. However, it is public statements like these that structure the narrative that will guide the behavior of all the players going forward. The standard is set: Putin must withdraw. Half or more of the signatories might not really mean it, but the fact that China and Biden stayed away says that they’re afraid this might wind up being binding. The task is to make it so.
Biden’s dream is for Ukraine to accept a loss of vital territory in exchange for a false peace that will only be sure to last through the election. He probably thinks a deal he can call peace for our time will salvage his dismal odds of getting elected again - along with dispatching surrogates to shame anyone who refuses to vote Blue, no matter who. When your party as a brand becomes a kind of secular faith with canonical truths dictated by authority figures, delusion becomes the norm. It’s no accident that the Democratic Party now appeals primarily to people with college education, especially postgraduate degrees, who seem determined to believe that Trump is the new Hitler and their furious social media posts will stop his rise.
I refuse to join the chorus of other college-educated Americans worrying about Trump becoming a dictator. My standing response to all of his pathetic nonsense is: bring it on, creep. Go ahead, drive the West Coast to demand Constitutional autonomy under a maximalist vision of state’s rights. Make my decade! All that holds the West Coast back from being one of the world’s leading countries are the fake liberal Pelosi types in bed with Wall Street who are determined to treat us as a colony for their personal profit (look up renowned champion of the people Nancy Pelosi’s net worth before you talk about corruption in Ukraine, American pundits). Just like Muscovites did Ukraine, which was the beating cultural and technological heart of the old USSR until the wicked thing finally ate itself and died.
The reality is that Trump is a con artist, just like Biden and Kennedy Jr. too. To estimate what they will actually do you have to compare the trajectory of their rhetoric with their material interests. Paying close attention to any particular thing they say is not advisable because they shift their rhetoric to target different audiences. Part of why Trump and Biden so badly mangle their speech is that they’re trying to generate meme-worthy statements, as many as possible in a short time if they can get away with it. Politicians are products, the faces of a brand, in modern American democracy.
Leadership doesn’t matter because your people will laud you almost whatever you do. Though Trump has lately been talking about how the US is being too generous to Ukraine, the $61 billion in aid only passed Congress because he latched onto the idea of making it a loan. It is entirely possible that Trump will be yanked towards a position that winds up being better for Ukraine than Biden’s presently is. He fears looking weak above all else, and a number of conservatives from the UK appear to have his ear, which seems to flatter his ego. It’s a point of leverage, at least. Nearly all that anyone except Israel gets from Biden is words, and last I checked they don’t stop glide bombs or tanks any more than pretend-chiding Israel about its absolutely not major Rafah offensive.
As far as Britain’s own elections go, polls there are pretty reliable and Labour looks to be adopting a strategy of just not screwing up too badly while letting discontent with the consequences of Brexit take down poor Rishi Sunak. The SNP up in Scotland having a bit of a corruption crisis puts them into a bad position, so though Labour isn’t saying anything about reversing Brexit if they do win big the international assumption will likely be the UK swinging back towards the EU.
Combine that with Trump’s return, or outright chaos after a close and contested election decided on partisan grounds by the US Congress or Supreme Court, and all of a sudden the European project with Ukraine as its shield and motive force against a whole new purpose in the world. I will admit to having a soft spot for the EU, though from afar - the dream it represents is a fine one, but I don’t doubt that it is in dire need of reform. This is true of most institutions across the calcified ideological system its high priests call Western Civilization. In Europe, Ukraine might have triggered the required renewal. The USA, by contrast, has a lot of dead wood left to burn.
Regardless, America’s allies have to be prepared for the full range of outcomes after this election, the most likely of which is a marked isolationist turn and renewed self-destructive obsession with China whichever vain loon wins. Neither partisan team is able to break the deadlock both are trapped in nor really want to, because the one thing you can be sure of in American politics is that win or lose, the same old dirtbag politicians never go away. Something too many countries have in common these days, democracy or not.
Using profits from frozen russian assets to secure another major loan for Ukraine is a step. Another would be upping the flow of material from NATO countries to the brigades preparing to receive new soldiers once their refresher training ends in a few weeks. Some has been announced, but not nearly enough.
For political leaders who don’t know, an F-16 is great, but an F-16 backing up a properly equipped combined arms force is the embodied fury of the gods. There’s a reason why the USA’s enemies have survived by embracing counterinsurgency. And for all my suspicion of the higher echelons of the chain of command, most operational elements of the American and allied armed forces know their business and perform it well.
Give Ukraine the same chance, and those stagnant lines on the national-level map that the media beyond Ukraine is so frustrated to see stay stable will move. When Ukraine can hit every enemy position in a selected area within minutes of being spotted by a drone, it will be possible to tear apart orc units to their full depth then advance.
If Moscow continues to waste its resources and Ukraine is properly reinforced, it can begin in just three months. By November the endgame could be in sight. Sometime next year, it might finally be over. For good. Make that happen, Team Biden, and you might just keep your jobs.